Mirror Lake
by DancingCandlelight
Summary: We never see the Phantom alone in his lair, with his thoughts, his hopes and his past. This is a small glimpse of that, set just before the the beginning of the musical. (Piece one of a trilogy of pieces: Mirror Lake, Fire and Night, and Black as Emptiness. These do not need to be read together, but are in a similar vein.)


Drops of warm yellow shivered on the lake's surface, the reflections of hundreds of candles, crammed into crevices, or resting in handsome candelabra. Gold on black, sparkles of light upon the dark depths. No wind ever ruffled them, no sunlight ever signalled their extinguishing. They laughed at the dark, and smiled at their reflections.

How like a mirror the lake could be. Now it held the image of a face, broken and warped. His face. Crouched on the rocky lake shore, he could see it. It pained him to look at it. He was not frightened of his own reflection of course, but it was a reminder of a harsh truth. No one would love him, ever. No one could, with a face like his. Once seen, he would surely be hated; a source of fear. His own mother had shown him as much. The memory of her was a dark, clinging shadow in his mind. The thousand times when he had longed to be held close, but had been left alone, sobbing, in a dark corner. A mask, she had given him, but she knew what lay behind, and hated him all the same. He had even been afraid of the dark then, but she had never comforted him, or held him so he wouldn't be alone. The darkness had better covered what she did not wish to see. He had hated the dark, imagining monsters to be lurking in its depths. Now, he lived always in the darkness; it was like a shelter, a solemn friend. Now he was the one covered in it, lurking in it. And it continued to hide what no one wished to see.

He lifted a hand to cover the right side of his face, the brokenness, the ugliness. It was grooved, and rough to the touch. The face that looked back at him now looked normal. Normal. He sighed. Why was such a curse his? For years he had bourne it, but now it was different. Because he was no longer content to be alone. Because of Christine.

Her voice had charmed him at first, soaring and beautiful, full of hope. Then he had seen her, and her beauty, gentleness and innocence had created in him a longing to be with her always, to never be parted from her. She was the only person who had ever spoken to him gently, but she only knew his voice. Not his face.

He should have stayed away. There should have been no lessons with the "Angel of Music". Maybe then it would be easier. Perhaps then being alone in the darkness would have been bearable. But now he was only conscious of two things: that he loved Christine Daaé, and that she could never love him in return if she saw his face.

He dug his fingernails into the warped flesh. "This is no part of me," he spat at his reflection. All the hurt, the loneliness, built up in his chest, boiling in inside him into some kind of fury. He lashed out viciously at the water, scattering his reflection.

"This is not me! THIS IS NOT ME!" He stood to his feet and screamed at the darkness. The echoes bounced around the enormous cavern, screaming back at him.

His chest heaved, and hot tears stung his eyes. He blinked them away, and slumped down into a crouch once more. The fury had melted away, but the hurt and the emptiness closed in around him. "This is not who I am," he whispered, forcing a sob back down his throat. Silence filled the cavern, but his mind was full of a girl's voice, her gentleness, her innocence, her song. Christine would never love him if she knew he was such a monster, so she must never know. But he could not keep himself from seeing her again.

The mask lay beside him, ready. White as a pearl, white as snow. White as innocence. He had not truly needed a mask in his years in the darkness, but he had worn one, mostly to fool himself that someday, somehow, he could be normal. He could be loved.

But this mask was new. This mask was special. Lovingly molded over several months, it held itself to his face perfectly. He picked it up gently and fitted it into place. Half a normal man, half a mask, his reflection told him. A mask was better than a monster. Perhaps she could love this. She could love him as he should have been.

A strange feeling washed over him. A lightness, a warmth, like a glimpse of the glow of the sun after being trapped in the dark.

A low note built up in his throat, then pushed between his lips, and a song went soaring around the cavern. A song from an opera of his own creation, one of his first, when the world had seemed a little less dark. A song of hope. The tune shivered his body, and thrilled his soul.

Perhaps Christine could learn to love him, for who he really was. Perhaps. "And this is who I am," he thought, "my voice, my music. I am my song in the darkness. My music of the night."


End file.
